Royal Swinger

I owned my first typewriter, (the cheapest Smith-Corona portable available at the time), while still in high-school. It was a birthday present from my parents.

At the time, I was in grade 8 and enduring weekly typing classes taught by Brother Noonan.

He would hover over our shoulders with a wooden ruler, eagerly waiting to apply painful raps to our knuckles for incorrect finger placement, typing errors, or extremely low WPM counts.

The Smith Corona “Cougar” was a piece of crap compared to the typewriters we were using at school, which led me to visit various shops and department stores looking for something better, (and similar in price), to replace the Cougar

I finally came across the Royal “Swinger”. It seemed to be better built and it’s key action was much smoother than the Smith Corona.

I asked my parents to return the Smith Corona so I could use the refund to buy a better typewriter. They didn’t want to go through all the trouble, so I had to plead and expound on why the Swinger was so much better than the Cougar, and at the same price, too!

After several days of relentless pestering they finally seemed to be giving in. That’s when I pounced with the “coup de grâce” reason I’d been saving to finally win them over, "THE ROYAL SWINGER ALSO COMES WITH AN AM RADIO BUILT INTO THE CASE!" (Now, that oughta do it.)

They rolled their eyes, and I immediately realized what a ridiculous reason I’d given for buying a typewriter.

Even so, a few days later, they returned the Cougar, gave me the full refund, and I was able to buy the Swinger.

It was a much better machine than the Smith Corona and I happily made use of it all through high school.

I used the AM radio once or twice, but abandoned it almost immediately because my musical tastes had moved on to the cooler music playing on FM radio at the time.

As for Brother Noonan and his grade 8 typing class, I didn’t enjoy it at the time, but was pleasantly surprised to find how useful my typing skills would become years later when I transitioned to using computers.

Thank you Brother Noonan.